Power provider TransAlta Corp. vowed to continue growing Tuesday despite low electricity prices in its home province and a first-quarter reorganization in its coal-fired generation arm that resulted in 164 eliminated positions.

The Calgary-based company said 27 people were laid off — most at its Sundance and Keephills power plants west of Edmonton — with the rest of the positions emptied through attrition, retirement or reassignment. The cuts to 20 per cent of the workforce started in January. TransAlta said they are substantially complete and will save about $12 million per year.

TransAlta and other power companies are facing a federally mandated deadline to retire coal-fired plants because of their greenhouse gas emissions but the job reductions were made to cut costs and improve efficiency in an oversupplied power market, president and chief executive Dawn Farrell told reporters after its annual general meeting.

Meanwhile, she said, the company is studying four ways to replace coal-based power revenue, including a new look at the possible use of carbon capture and sequestration to allow coal plants to continue to operate while their carbon dioxide emissions are diverted underground.

“It’s more than a glint in our eye and it’s less than, ‘We’ve got a project and we’re ready to approve it,’” she said. “It’s a project that would be directed at our Sundance units, the early ones that come off in 2019, and it would be something where we’d take the carbon and it would go into miscible flood (enhanced oil recovery injections).”

In April 2012, TransAlta and its parters shelved the proposed $1.4-billion Pioneer CCS project planned at its Keephills 3 plant on economic grounds despite the pledge of nearly $800 million in taxpayer support. Farrell said any new carbon capture undertaking would have to be economically feasible without government money.

She said TransAlta has applied for permits to build a seventh unit at Sundance, a combined cycle plant that could replace coal. It is also looking at the economics of converting coal plants to gas-fired “peakers” which are turned on only when short supply drives prices higher. And the company may also expand by buying “behind-the-fence” cogeneration facilities or renewable energy plants in Alberta, Australia or the United States.

“Right now prices are very low in Alberta so nothing’s really needed imminently, but our objective is to have everything ready to go so we can hit on the best one when the market conditions improve,” said Farrell.

In a research report published March 26, FirstEnergy Capital analyst Martin King noted Alberta power prices to that point in 2015 had averaged $30.07 per megawatt-hour, well below his December forecast of $50.18, due to strong wind generation and short-lasting strength in winter heating loads.

He reduced his full year price forecast by 31 per cent to $33.66 per MWh, and chopped his forecast for 2016 by 21 per cent to $42.13.

TransAlta’s first-quarter net income fell nearly 45 per cent to $26 million, from $47 million a year earlier, as it reported an average Alberta power price of $29 per MWh compared to $61 per MWh in the same period last year.

Revenue for the quarter was $593 million, down 18 per cent from $775 million during the same period in 2014.

During the quarter, TransAlta proposed transferring Australian assets worth $1.78 billion to its spinoff company, TransAlta Renewables Inc., in return for $215 million and an increase in its ownership from 70 to 76 per cent. The deal is to go to a TransAlta Renewables shareholder vote in May.

Farrell said TransAlta has other assets which are also candidates to be transferred to its subsidiary.